We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

Bland Ambition II: Ma'ambition is coming shortly. But the real world continues to spin, and as it does it kicks up a lot of note-worthy dust, and I must keep up with my note-keeping.

1.) MC Hammer has a blog. And? It is as much a dad-blog as any of our blogs are mom/mommy/dad/daddy blogs. Many, many pictures of his adorable little boy, who apparently had a difficult time of it in his early weeks, and who has just recently had another scare. I defy you to not tear up; if you do not tear up, or at least swallow hard, at the image of his sweet little boy in a hospital bed you are mean and I don't like you. I went over expecting to laugh at the bizarrocity of it all - it's Hamma! What could he possibly blog about? - but when I got to his baby photos I got all verklempt. Sucka.

Motherhood has clearly wussified me beyond all recognition. See me coming at you with the big words? Want to baton-smack me in my oh-so-sarcastic knees? Flash a baby at me. Tell me that you're a parent, and that you really love your kids. You'll stop me dead in my tracks. I will not make fun of you, and I will smack anyone who does.*

It is now my mission to somehow lure Hammer over to my blog to comment. If I can get MC Hammer to comment on my blog I will be crowned the Queen of Dubious Cool and even the Lilliputians won't be able to get me down.

*This only applies to human beings and other sentient creatures of the Planet Earth, and also, sometimes, characters of fiction. This does not apply to robots, cyborgs or uncuddly aliens from the Planet Scientology, which means that, yes, I will make fun of Tom Cruise, but not Katie Holmes, who is, obviously, an abductee and has had her cerebral cortex vacuumed, probably through an anal probe, but also human and, I hope, sentient. And the 'really love your kids' clause, I don't need to tell you, also exempts Kevin Federline, who I also reserve the right to make fun of. And David Hasselhoff, because there's also a creepy clause, and a don't-smack-your-wife clause.

NOOOOO! Scientologists killed Biccy! Oh, the humanity...!

2) This amazing fellow, Craig Kielburger, is/was one of my students. He has just won the 2006 World Children's Prize, which is also known as the Children's Nobel Prize (he has, not incidentally, also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times), for his longtime work - begun when he was, wait for it, 12 years old! - to free children from poverty and exploitation.*

I'm not taking any credit - he began his amazing journey long before he met me - but I do take special pride in knowing him, and in having contributed in some small way to his education. He was, and is, a keen and passionate student of political philosophy, and we've had many a lively conversation about whether the great philosophers really believed that the world could be made a better place. He taught me, the jaded, skeptical philosophy scholar, that it is really sometimes worth putting philosophy into action.

So join me in a big standing O for Craig! (Thunderous applause! Proud, proud teacher beams madly and wipes a stray tear!)

Seriously, this is the first time that I've gone all misty-eyed with pride about a student's accomplishments. But! He's changing the world! Helping children! (See what I said above about getting all mushy about anything to do with children.) Give him a hand!

*If you're interested in learning more about his organization, or, better, supporting it, check it out here (or, follow the link in the sidebar). Oh, and this one, too. You could also buy his book (which - personal plug - I contributed some research to), which I highly recommend. As does Oprah, and Richard Gere, but you like me more, don't you, so why don't you take my word on this?

3) If you're looking to help Save Children in other ways, don't forget to support the Muscular Dystrophy Association and Muscular Dystrophy Canada (also linked in sidebar). All of us who love Tanner - who I blogged about here (and if you haven't read this, go read it, not because I want you to read me, which I do, but because I want you to feel this cause. So that you'll help) - are still wishing and praying and making sacrifices to the gods for any little ray of hope in the struggle against Bad Diseases that Kill Children, Especially This One Because It is the One that is Hurting Tanner. Who Bad Mother loves very much, so she'd be very much obliged if you'd support, if only by talking it up.

(And Tanner? Here's another picture of your baby cousin to hold you until we get there! End of May!)

Playgrounds just aren't fun without Big Cool Cousins to play with...

4) Proof positive that memes really do serve the higher purpose of keeping us all informed: Urban_Mommy (who just had her baby, the Boy Wonder, um, five and half weeks ago, and is already blogging again. I, on the other hand, at five weeks post-partum, was huddled on the corner of my sofa, clutching the wee WonderBaby, sobbing uncontrollably) took up my tag, posted it, and lo if I didn't roll back in my seat, gobsmacked, at learning new things about her. (Urban_Mommy, if you didn't already know this, is a VIP in my/WonderBaby's offline world, which is to say, I should know this shit.) Three of her six 'weird things' were things that - cannot believe this - I did not know. Can you guess what they are?

And I just have to add this: She can write backwards; I can read backwards. This used to drive my parents crazy on road-trips, because I would sit in the back seat and read every sign backwards, out loud. 'gniK regruB!' 'maerc eci!' (I was hungry) 'ckor gnillaf rof chtaw!' Drove them nuts. (Not as nuts as my random shrill shrieking did, but still.) So, UM? I now wish all the more that we'd gone to high school together. The note-exchanging would have been brilliant, and impenetrable if intercepted.

(Oh, also? I also do the talking to myself. MAD talking to myself. I note this only because the story behind the Bad Ladies moniker is a very embarassing talking-aloud-to-myself-in-public story that I will one day share with you, and, hell, I love to link back to old posts so I'm putting up a road marker here.)

5) I'm going to Blogher. Yesterday's post, and the comments, and Kristen's post on sacrificial parenting convinced me that it is just fine if I take a weekend to myself and go to a conference that is non-academic. It doesn't make me a lesser mother, and it doesn't make me a lesser scholar.

But, full disclosure: it was Kristen's promise, in yesterday's comments, of the 'I (Heart) Bulbous-headed Lilliputians' t-shirt that really did it. Kristen, I want that t-shirt. And you have to wear one, too.

WHO'S REALLY BLOGGING HERE?

Um, how does one spell 'Lilliputian'...?